“I’ve hit Rock Bottom!” We say this as if it’s a bad thing and based on our current circumstances, it most certainly is for your “present self”. However, the lowest point of your current reality doesn’t necessarily have to be a ‘bad thing.’
Over the past year I have experience many turmoils that happened in my life. From personal issues to the loss of close friends, professional mishaps and emotional tornadoes I have had a “shaky” year. But my “Rock Bottom” hit me in the final days of 2015.
One of my favorite musicians of all times is Sixto Rodriguez immortalized my feelings, and if you haven’t heard of him…you should check out his work. One of his songs entitled “Cause” starts off with an epic lyric that never rang as true for me as it did a few weeks leading up to Christmas. “Cause I lost my job….two weeks before Christmas…” While I didn’t “lose” my job, a few of my clients canceled my services roughly two weeks before Christmas. I saw a drastic reduction in my income and as a result, my Christmas was going to be bleak indeed.
Solitary Moments of a Lonely Heart
That last week of 2015 was the culmination of my “shit storm”. On Christmas day…I was alone. With a few coins in my pocket, there was no gifts for me that year. I sat alone in my house able to hear the festive celebrations of the next door neighbors, blissful in their unity and stuffed to the brim with excessive eating. I could feel the anxiety claw at my throat like a rabid raccoon lost in insanity and my only companion was the loneliness I felt inside.
As I sat there, I pondered on “how I got to where I am” and realized that much of my situation was due to my own in-action in my pursuit of happiness. I was doing things that wasn’t in-line with what would make me happy and sought after security and financial stability. Ironically both of the latter would be void in my last days of 2015.
Fast forward a week, we reach the 31st of December. Once more, I would be alone this fateful night. Listening to the celebration of the masses as they drank themselves into a new year. At one level, I envied them. They were so joyous in their intoxicated states, shooting fire into the sky. At another level I was glad to not be a part of it. It was almost as if I needed to be alone that evening.
It started off similar to Christmas day, anxiety and loneliness my companions. Yet as I sat watching some god-awful show on TV I stopped. I turned off my television set and sat in silence. I was officially at rock bottom.
Yet, instead of pitying my own existence I stood up and spoke out loud to the room, to myself. With passion and anger I refused to accept the dreariness of my situation. I scorned my past behavior and lack of action, I acknowledged that it was I who brought myself into this situation. A two hour conversation, which from the outside would sound like a madman ranting about his own lunacy came to the conclusion that I would no longer find myself in this state. I would no longer be the victim of my own device.
Anxiety dissipated and a new sense of vigor entered my soul. So I dropped some Acid and started to work on that which makes my soul smile.
The Great Teacher
I believe that we all at one point or another, or in fact many times over should hit Rock bottom. It is where we come face to face with our own demons. We begin to ask the real questions in our lives, void of the distractions of money and circumstances. In that solitary moment you are truthfully honest about yourself…and this is a good thing.
However, rock bottom can be a teacher or it can be the executioner…it all comes down to your own conclusions. For me, I chose to be humble enough to embrace the lessons of this state. I embraced the loneliness and the anxiety and as a blacksmith melts metal in a furnace, I took those feelings and converted them into something else.
By the third day of the New Year, I completed my fifth book. By the second day, I completed a song and a video to accompany the song entitled “Bobby the Brave”.
The point here is that when you reach that dusty surface we call Rock Bottom, you have two choices. You can either use it as your platform to launch yourself into a new existence which resonates with the frequency of your own soul…or you can start digging your own grave. But that my friends…is entirely up to you.
Here’s the song I created entitled “The Ballad of Bobby the Brave” for your amusement…